"Great," said Don. "We’ll have to get some wood, come winter."

"Do you get bored if you have nothing to do?" asked Sarah.

"No," said the robot, and he smiled that reassuring smile again. "I’m content just to relax."

"An admirable trait," said Sarah, glancing at Don. "I wonder how we ever got along without one."

Don found himself feeling more and more confused with each passing day. He’d had a handle on life, damn it all. He’d understood its rhythms, its stages, and he’d moved through them all, in the proper sequence, surviving each one.

Youth, he knew, had been for education, for the first phase of professional development, for exploring sexual relationships.

Mature adulthood had meant a committed marriage, raising children, and consolidating whatever material prosperity he had been entitled to.

After that had come middle age, a time for reevaluation. He’d managed to avoid the affair and sports car then; his midlife crisis, precipitated by a minor heart attack, had finally spurred him to lose weight, and hearing so many women — and some men — tell him how good he looked, how he was hotter at forty-five than he’d been at thirty, had been tonic enough to help him weather those years without needing to do anything more to prove he was still attractive.

And, finally — or so it should have been — there had been the so-called golden years: retirement, becoming a grandparent, taking it easy, an epoch for acceptance and reflection, for companionship and peace, for winding things up as the end approached.

The stages of life; he knew them and understood them: collectively, an arc, a storyline, with a predicable, cliched beginning, middle, and end.

But now there was suddenly more; not just an epilogue tacked on, but a whole new volume, and a totally unplanned one, at that. Rollback: Book Two of the Donald Halifax Story. And although Don understood he was its author, he had no idea what was supposed to happen, where it was all supposed to lead. There was no standard plot skeleton to follow, and he didn’t have a clue how it was going to end. He couldn’t begin to visualize what he should be doing decades down the road; he wasn’t even sure what he should be doing in the present day.

But there was one thing he knew he had to do soon, although he was dreading it.

"I have something to tell you," Don said to Lenore the next time he saw her.

Lenore was lying naked in bed next to him, in her basement apartment on Euclid Avenue. She propped her head up with a crooked arm and looked at him. "What?"

He hesitated. This was more difficult than he’d thought it would be, and he’d thought it would be very difficult. How’d he ever get into a situation in which telling his… his… his whatever Lenore was… that he was married would be the easy part?

He let the air out of his lungs through a small opening between his lips, puffing his cheeks out as he did so. "I — um, I’m older than you probably think I am," he said at last.

Her eyes narrowed a bit. "Aren’t you the same age as me?"

He shook his head.

"Well, you can’t be any more than thirty," she said.

"I’m older than that."

"Thirty-one? Thirty-two? Don, I don’t care about six or seven years. I’ve got an uncle who is ten years older than my aunt."

I can do ten years for breakfast, he thought. "Keep going."

"Thirty-three?" Her tone was getting nervous. "Thirty-four? Thirty—"

"Lenore," he said, closing his eyes for a moment. "I’m eighty-seven."

She made a small raspberry sound. "Jesus, Don, you—"

"I’m eighty-seven," he said, the words practically exploding from him. "I was born in 1960. You must have heard about the rejuvenation process they’ve got now. I underwent a rollback earlier this year. And this" — he indicated his face with a counter-clockwise motion of his hand — "is the result."

She scuttled sideways on the bed, like a crab on hot sands, increasing the distance between them. "My… God," she said. She was peering at him, studying him, clearly looking for some sign, one way or the other, of whether it was true. "But that procedure, it costs a fortune."

He nodded. "I, um, had a benefactor."

"I don’t believe you," Lenore said, but she sounded as though she were lying. "I- I mean, it can’t…"

"It’s true. I could prove it in a hundred different ways. Do you want to see some photo ID, the way I looked before?"

"No!" An expression of… of disgust, perhaps, had fleetingly passed over her face.

Of course she didn’t want to see the old man she’d just had inside her.

"I should have told you sooner, but—"

"You’re damn right you should have. Shit, Don!" But then, perhaps the thought occurring because she’d just uttered his name, a glimmer of hope appeared in her eyes, as if she’d realized that this might all be some elaborate put-on. "But, wait, you’re Sarah Halifax’s grandson! You told me that."

"No, I didn’t. You guessed that."

She pulled even farther away, and managed to cover her breasts with the sheet, the first hint of modesty he’d ever seen from her. "Who the hell are you?" she said. "Are you even related to Sarah Halifax?"

"Yesss," he said, protracting the word into a gentle hiss. "But" — he swallowed hard, trying to keep it all together — "but I’m not her grandson." He found himself unable to meet her eyes, and so he looked down at the rumpled bedspread between them. "I’m her husband."

"Fuck," said Lenore. "Shit."

"I am so sorry. Really, I am."

"Her husband?" she said again, as if perhaps she’d misheard the first time.

He nodded.

"I think you should leave."

The words tore into his heart, like bullets. "Please. I can—"

"What?" she demanded. "You can explain? There’s no fucking explanation for this."

"No," he said. "No, I can’t explain. And I can’t justify it. But, God, Lenore, I never wanted to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt anyone." His stomach was churning, and he felt disoriented. "But I want you to… to know, to understand."

"Understand what? That everything that has gone down between us has been a lie?"

"No!" he said. "No, no, God, no. This has been more… more real than anything in my life for—"

"For what?" she sneered. "For years? For decades?"

He let out a long, shuddering sigh. He couldn’t even protest that she was being unfair. The fact that she was even still talking to him was more, he knew, than he had a right to. Still, he tried to defend himself, although, as soon as the words were out, he realized how ill-advised they were. "Look," he said, "you’re the one who turned things physical."

"Because I thought you were somebody you aren’t. You lied to me."

He thought about protesting that he hadn’t, not technically, or at least not often.

"And, anyway," she continued, "who started things is so beside the point it’s not even in the same solar system. You’re an octogenarian, for God’s sake. You’re old enough to be my grandfather."

He’d expected those last few words, but they didn’t hurt any less for that. "Sarah underwent the same treatment," he said, blurting it out. "But it didn’t work for her.

She’s still physically eighty-seven, and I’m… this."

Lenore said nothing, but her mouth was slightly downturned and her eyebrows were drawn together.

"Cody McGavin paid for it," continued Don. "He wanted Sarah to be around when the next reply comes in from Sigma Draconis. I- I was just along for the ride, but…"

"But now you’re Sarah’s caregiver."

"Please," he said. "I didn’t ask for any of this."